Wednesday, 22 March 2017

[BLOG] Don’t Kick the Bucket: Zine Insights into Early D&D

The quest for old game documents, particularly homemade
adventure scenarios can be a frustrating search, and yield few results. We know
little about how people really played, and what kind of games they did play. Things
are more clear in the US – after all, many people publishing in APA zines went
on to publish their stuff professionally or at least semi-professionally –
while fewer things are known about the British gaming scene. One of the more
famous dungeons from the age was Don Turnbull’s Greenlands, and a snippet, The
Hall of Mystery, was published in The
Dragon #21, showing a very tough sub-level (another, Lair of the Demon Queen, apparently appeared in White Dwarf #7). Sadly, Greenlands appears to be
lost in spite of Chris Turnbull’s efforts to recover it.

However, other traces of early D&D survive in
the online repository of the UK
Diplomacy Zine Archive. I discovered these artefacts while following the
links from Zhu Bajiee’s post
on The Realm of Zhu, which lead me to the early issues of Chimaera,
a zine dedicated to Diplomacy and other postal games. Chimaera was edited by
Clive F. Booth, and published a respectable 102 issues between June 1975 and
July 1983. This was a time, before computer games or ubiquitous television
programming, when postal games were at their peak. Chimaera is mostly a relic
of this hobby, of which I know very little, but it also reveals a small treasure
cache of old D&D content from the dawn of the hobby.

This Crazy New Game

The first mention of D&D appears in Chimaera #5
(September 1975), as a request for information and reviews. This seems to be
the earliest period of gaming in the UK, as people are regularly referred to
three sources to obtain a copy of D&D (one of them the early Games
Workshop, another based in Basel, Switzerland!) An introduction to Empire of the Petal Throne and the
world of Tékumel is published in Issue #11 (January 1976), followed by a long
series of adventure reports about the original migrant worker RPG (there is
some quality dungeoneering there, rather less dodgy than the D&D content).
EPT, in a quite naïve way, is even described as “surely the most detailed fantasy game that will ever be produced” (p.
12). Also included from Issue #19 are some play-by-mail En Garde reports with character names along the lines of Fabian
Titanique, André D’Avidson (played by... yes, one Andy Davidson), Noah Speke De
Inglisch, Charles Hercule de Thingy, The Scarlet Pimp, and Robert de Paté de
Fois Gras – and, silliness aside, it proved very popular, becoming a regular
feature through the zine’s run. However, our concern is not EPT or En Garde,
but the utterly charming and fully authentic early D&D content starting
with Issue #18.

***

Sample Level

Dungeons and Dragons: An Introduction by Paul Cook is just a two-page contribution, but a key one. It contains a surprisingly
succinct and interesting description of the game, character generation, and
best of all, a sample dungeon level! It is not made clear whether it comes from
Hope Castle, Paul’s main dungeon (“situated on the borders of the great empire
of the Conans”, and “built thousands
of years ago by the gold dragons”), but it is a fascinating document in its
own right. The dungeon level, roughly the size of the sample dungeon from the
OD&D booklets, is a collection of a few rooms and passages, supplemented
with a minimal typewritten key of 17 rooms (only three of which are over one
line of length). Nevertheless, we have a lot of cool features to note:

The level serves as a distribution nexus to reach the lower levels. There are no less
than six connections in a relatively small place: two stairways to level 2, a
slanting passage and a sliding door to level 3, a “space room” (whatever that
means) dropping to level 5, and a trap door with a drop to level 7! That’s some
serious connectivity – if you can survive the fall to those deep levels.

Four monster
lairs offering very different challenge levels: a smaller and larger goblin
lair, a minotaur, and an orc outpost. The treasures are generous (there is a ring of three wishes), but assuming a
large first-level company, several adventurers will have to die to obtain them.

There are some quite magical and imaginative traps and tricks: the shrinking room,
the acid fountain, an endless corridor, and a wizard masquerading as an old man,
teaching the players to be wary of first appearances.

Then there is the bucket encounter (#10, forgotten
from the map), which is perhaps the funniest part, and best classified as an enigma.

That’s a handful – and it is all on a single
typewritten page. There is a pleasing complexity to it despite the limited space:
it looks like a dungeon with a decent variety of content, and a promising
layout.

The Empire

Paul’s introduction continues in Issue #19 with an
examination of wilderness play – a particularly rare thing in a
dungeon-oriented period. This is one and a half pages including two maps, but
presents an appealing and adventure-friendly mini-setting. It is a fantasy
mishmash where elves live in the forests, dragons live in the mountains and
hill giants live in the hills, yet it has its own peculiar feel. The area surrounding
Hope Castle is ruled by a disintegrating Empire ruled by the insane and
childless Emperor Orweelia VI, and managed by a cadre of incompetent
bureaucrats and a host of greedy local nobles. There are decent bits like “[on]
the road through the vampire caves to Red
Castle, there are two huge statues blocking the roads. It is said that anyone
passing under them rather than around them, will be cursed with bad luck and
die or else become incredibly rich – all within a year”, or a quarantined city
with raging bubonic plague. Issue #25 offers further detail on the empire’s
most important nobles, from the ancient wizard to the knight who turns men into
mutants and sets them loose in his dungeons... and Grimy of Groin, a PC dwarf
who obtained a castle by poisoning its former inhabitant (kind of a pattern in
Paul’s games).

In Issue #21, we learn that the main characters in Paul Cook’s Isle of
Wight group are imaginatively named, and quite the murder-hobos:

Merlin: often adventures alone or in a company of orcs, “was once friendly with a Balrog, but did nothing to prevent the Evil
High Priest from charming the arse of it”, GM finally got rid of him with a
potion of poison.

Aragorn: “Don’t be duped by the name,
Aragorn, [...] is again chaotic”, another guy with orc henchmen who kills
elves on sight, has a pet chimaera he uses to extort people. “Takes pleasure in seeing orcs pick up lawful
swords and dying.”

Sinbad, Son of Popeye, Son of Trufo: “Takes great
masochistic pleasure in getting killed, to the point where he attempted to wipe
out 16 werewolves on his own!” He was backstabbed and killed by Merlin and
Aragorn.

John of Redtown: a rare lawful
cleric, fond of using flaming oil-based tactics, and reliant on friends to keep
him alive. Was once turned into a swine by a beautiful witch.

Lefalia the Elf: flaming
sword guy.

The Temple of Set

A new dungeon, The Temples of Set
and Seker, is found in Issue
#23. This is another contribution by Paul Cook, and represents partial write-ups
of two rival temples “situated somewhere
in the dungeons of Hope Castle”. The odd thing about the twin temples,
erected by the gods themselves in the struggle between Chaos and Law, is that
their backstory pretty much mirrors Dark
Tower, the infamous high-level AD&D deathfest by Paul Jacquays, but preceding
them by three years (1976 vs. 1979). It would be interesting to know if this
was a case of loose inspiration or parallel evolution, although it is probably
the latter: there does not seem to be any further connection, and both draw on the
D&Dised mythology of Gods, Demigods
and Heroes (as does Temple of Ra
Accursed by Set, a fairly uninteresting Judges Guild module from 1979). The
temples, with 14 and 11 keyed areas respectively, are quite different from the entrance
level provided in Issue #18, and are best thought of as themed sub-levels. Some apparent features stand out:

The map is a branching structure
with a prominent use of secret doors. The players could miss much of the place
if they were careless. There are no connections
to other levels (what appear to be stairs are just a trick), probably meaning
these complexes were located on the boundaries of a regular level.

The key is a mixture of general
and themed encounters. They have a sinister bent, like a girl being
sacrificed in an evil ritual, men dying of the bubonic plague, food being
poisonous or turning into spiders, or exploding glass. They also appear
dangerous, potentially deadly for an unwary group.

There is a room where there is a 5% chance you will meet Set; otherwise,
you meet 100 of his minions (10th level Lords).

Seker’s
temple is of course much less interesting than Set's, but it could potentially serve as a
base of operations for Lawful groups (although considering Merlin and Aragorn,
they would just loot it and put the inhabitants to the sword). There is a room
of 3 wishes, and another where there is a 1% chance of an encounter with Seker
(as the key informs us, lawful gods are more busy than chaotics).

***

Paul Cook’s campaign was not the only one to
receive attention in Chimaera. Dave Tant, whose articles start from Issue #19, focused
on higher-level play, and organised a zine-spanning play-by-mail campaign
called The Pits of Cil. After
organisational matters and rules interpretations, the campaign is introduced for
good in Issue #22. It is a post-apocalyptic setting of a future Earth descended
into barbarism and populated by strange new creatures, giving a grounding for
the dungeon, “an ancient ruined palace”,
“built on the site of earlier palaces and
subterranean workings” (in fact, the name comes from Eyes of the Overworld, although it does not seem to have provided
more than some superficial influence).

The Pits of Cil: Intro

Tant’s game involved eleven parallel groups delving into the ruins, from
The Hill Booth Boys to Leviathan’s Angels. All of them were assembled from a
generous XP budget, allowing for a mixture of high (7th-8th)
and low-level characters plus retainers. Issue #23 introduces a further
opportunity for coop play in the form of Inter-Zine
Dungeons, allowing the transfer of characters from one zine’s campaign to another
– “forcible (i.e. involuntary) transfer
by means of a transporter room”, “voluntary
transfer by means of a trek across a moderately hostile landscape”, or transfer
via a wish. It is raised that this presents
issues of rules compatibility and referee interpretations (concerns which influenced
the design goals and tenor of AD&D), as well as different paces of publication
between the zines. The idea of a multiverse of games – whose US parallels are recounted
in a
classic 2005 thread by Calithena, and which has been revived via the much
more recent Constantcon
and the FLAILSNAILS
conventions – seemed to hover between something that was at once very
desirable, yet laden with conflicts and trouble that made implementation mostly
impractical.

Dungeon Escalators

The postal format itself posed problems: later issues reveal players
regularly missed turns, or did not respond accurately to prodding, resulting in
outcomes like “Still nothing heard from
Les Kennedy, so his character dies, and his party turns chaotic. Sorry to see
you go Les.” (As it turns out, these followers turned into roving,
autonomous mobs of chaotic rabble who posed a danger to the active players.)
Exploration seemed to proceed at a very slow pace, although the PVP infighting –
a popular and exhilarating hobby on MUDs and later online games – must have
made up for it. The early write-ups don’t reveal too much about the Pits of Cil
beyond the creative chaos taking place, but some play reports do exist. In Issue
#34, Tant gives a DM’s perspective of a convention session, which may have taken
place in The Pits or (more likely) could have been entirely self-standing. The
quest for The Bowl of Midas has ideas like a rack of electrified swords (ouch),
and “the Stone Giant, heavily disguised
as a Giant Beatle with a Magic Guitar.” From Issue #35, regular and more
detailed play reports start appearing (this was around the time the first character
reached the 5th dungeon level).

The Pits of Cil continued for four years,
spanning over 850 letters before it wrapped up in Issue
#69 (October 1980). Dave Tant already drew some conclusions in Issue #62. The
dungeon was starting to get clogged with “abandoned parties”, and the remaining
players – down to ten after the campaign’s heyday of thirty or forty, this
final number including Don Turnbull – had to spend most of their time repulsing
their attacks. Runaway PVP also hindered dungeon exploration, and the faster
correspondents could gain an advantage above their peers. The campaign ended
with a bang, with an earthquake destroying the dungeon and the remaining
characters using their wish spells to
escape (one particular player from his wedding to a fairy princess). Tant
planned a followup AD&D campaign set on an island, but details of this game
are scant.

Chimaera itself lasted until July 1983, ending its run with
Issue #102 after eight years, something that’d make many commercial hobby
publications proud. As editor Clive Booth noted, the drive was no longer there,
nor were many of the friends he had started the journey with. There were, of
course, changes in the world as well: later issues talk increasingly about microcomputers,
while D&D had gone from its roots to something rather different. It was,
without doubt, the end of an era.

13 comments:

Good find! In Hip Hop, the equivalent of what you did counts as Crate Digging, to find obscure Beats & Breaks. I like it.I do not like PvP, though and the British GrimDark seems strong in these finds. Do we know more about more upbeat examples from elsewhere?I am curious as to your opinion on the sparsity of these bare bones, one-page-dungeons.

DELETED2ADD:Also: I cannot find the original "Tyranny of Fun" essay anymore. I understand you got so much flak for it, you changed it? My memory is a bit hazy on that protracted flamewar, with it's mutliple incarnations. I think it is an enormously influential plea for the DIY-spirit in the 21st century, and I would argue it indeed changes some minds. So I'd like to reread the original, 2006 EN-World version but cannot seem to find it.

These relics (and that's what they are) are not one-page dungeons in the modern sense. They are obviously extracted pieces of a greater whole, offered as examples of what D&D can do. The main problem I see with one-page dungeons is their self-limiting nature. These pieces aren't self-limiting, but expansive. The intro level has obvious departure points hinting at a complex dungeon behind them (you can travel to four different levels from such a small place). The competing temples are sub-levels hidden in the fabric of the larger dungeon, implying the existence of an expansive, complex labyrinth where they must be found. These notions point outwards, beyond the scope and confines of the sparse writing. They invite you to think big. Thus, they are the exact opposite of the one-page dungeon - they are samples of large, complex campaign environments.

Now the writing of the encounters, that's too little for me. I want more description and slightly more internal consistency (without turning the dungeon into a bland ecology experiment). They are examples of the-dungeon-as-puzzle idea of early OD&D (arguably challenged for the first time by Arneson's Temple of the Frog, then Judges Guild's City State). I appreciate it, see the appeal of it, find a lot that is admirable and inspiring in it - but do not practice it in this form.

However, the way it encourages you to grow your campaign beyond that entrance level - and take it out of the dungeon to the Empire - and let your players run wild with it until you have "Ffahrd" and "Merlin" running around the game... that's still magical.

WRT The Tyranny of Fun posts, the only place they exist now is in copies (mostly made by people who hated the idea). I got so weary of the crap I got for them, and the way this hounded my online reputation, that I went back and deleted them. It was a bad idea because it didn't stop anyone from attacking me (an important lesson - never bargain with idiots), while I went back on an idea I that's probably even more relevant now than ten years ago, but there you have it. It is gone.

And of course, nobody ever showed even a hint of curiosity about The Alternate Primer for Old-School Gaming, which was deliberately worded in a lets-be-nice-and-non-confrontational manner. That's another important lesson! :)

==predating its current meaning which tends to imply “role-assumption”

Not really an either-or for me but both. "Role-assumption" is very useful if conversation is important in your game, it is helpful because expressing the point of view of unusual characters is fairly difficult. [I don't mean accents at all]

==encounters should capture the group’s imagination, encourage them to take action

That's well made. I have a tendency to have players contemplate and wonder at the environments I create without designing buttons to push and levers to pull because I don't like obvious gaming trappings. But as you say it is a means to pull them in.

==it is best to be generous with the rules and allow characters to try actions

Yes, I am a very sympathetic DM particularly in life and death situations. Those stage improvising comics have a rule about always accepting what the other has just said never denying it - and that is a rule designed to maintain flow.

== a character loosing footing on a treacherous mountainside

That's interesting. I used to interpret the saving throw against falling *failure* as sometimes meaning the character did not actually fall. You have to really because the falling damage rules don't make sense when HPs mostly represent luck.

==in a way a magic missile or orc is no longer so to veteran players

There is something wrong if a DM can't make an orc fascinating if you think about it even to veteran players. The responsibility is on the DM to express himself with invention but also on the player not to react with 'o, he means an orc. I know the stats for that'. Players have to buy into the environment and out of the 'game'.

It would be great to recover and preserve/publish some of these treasures while they are still out there. (The fate of Don Turnbull's Greenlands is a big cautionary note.) Underport: Abyssal Descent, Rappan Athuk or what we have seen of Stefan Poag's Mines of Khunmar show how different these personal projects tend to be.

==predating its current meaning which tends to imply “role-assumption”

Not really an either-or for me but both. "Role-assumption" is very useful if conversation is important in your game, it is helpful because expressing the point of view of unusual characters is fairly difficult. [I don't mean accents at all]

==encounters should capture the group’s imagination, encourage them to take action

That's well made. I have a tendency to have players contemplate and wonder at the environments I create without designing buttons to push and levers to pull because I don't like obvious gaming trappings. But as you say it is a means to pull them in.

==it is best to be generous with the rules and allow characters to try actions

Yes, I am a very sympathetic DM particularly in life and death situations. Those stage improvising comics have a rule about always accepting what the other has just said never denying it - and that is a rule designed to maintain flow.

== a character loosing footing on a treacherous mountainside

That's interesting. I used to interpret the saving throw against falling *failure* as sometimes meaning the character did not actually fall. You have to really because the falling damage rules don't make sense when HPs mostly represent luck.

==in a way a magic missile or orc is no longer so to veteran players

There is something wrong if a DM can't make an orc fascinating if you think about it even to veteran players. The responsibility is on the DM to express himself with invention but also on the player not to react with 'o, he means an orc. I know the stats for that'. Players have to buy into the environment and out of the 'game'.

==predating its current meaning which tends to imply “role-assumption”

Not really an either-or for me but both. "Role-assumption" is very useful if conversation is important in your game, it is helpful because expressing the point of view of unusual characters is fairly difficult. [I don't mean accents at all]

==encounters should capture the group’s imagination, encourage them to take action

That's well made. I have a tendency to have players contemplate and wonder at the environments I create without designing buttons to push and levers to pull because I don't like obvious gaming trappings. But as you say it is a means to pull them in.

==it is best to be generous with the rules and allow characters to try actions

Yes, I am a very sympathetic DM particularly in life and death situations. Those stage improvising comics have a rule about always accepting what the other has just said never denying it - and that is a rule designed to maintain flow.

== a character loosing footing on a treacherous mountainside

That's interesting. I used to interpret the saving throw against falling *failure* as sometimes meaning the character did not actually fall. You have to really because the falling damage rules don't make sense when HPs mostly represent luck.

==in a way a magic missile or orc is no longer so to veteran players

There is something wrong if a DM can't make an orc fascinating if you think about it even to veteran players. The responsibility is on the DM to express himself with invention but also on the player not to react with 'o, he means an orc. I know the stats for that'. Players have to buy into the environment and out of the 'game'.